The fall of the Roman Empire
A social and ecological interpretation In this popular essay, Edward Goldsmith finds that internal moral and political decay and unsustainable agriculture underlie the fall of the Roman Empire, while the Barbarian invasions were merely the coup de grâce. The comparisons with our own society and misguided sense of permanence are unsettling. Originally published in The Ecologist, July 1975, then in Le Sauvage (France), April 1976. This revised version appeared as Chapter 1 of … Read More
Aluna (2012) – the Kogis return
In this new film (due April 2012), Alan Ereira returns to the Kogi of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Columbia, 20 years on from his first visit * which opened the world to this lost pre-Columbian civilisation, and its message that we (“the Younger Brothers”) are set on a course of global self-destruction. This time they lead us into the world of Aluna—the mind within nature—in a last attempt to teach us the error of our ways, and help avert disaster before it is … Read More
The Athabasca tar sands
As a result of the peak in global crude oil production and the subsequent explosion in oil prices, the world's largest and dirtiest industrial project is racing ahead in the Canadian heartland of Alberta. The oil industry is now heavily engaged in excavating the vast, and previously uneconomic, tar sands sitting under the Athabasca boreal forest, in order to plug the gap in faltering global oil supplies—and at any cost. The consequences for climate change, ecological … Read More
Pollution by tourism
Mass tourism is not a benign force of economic development, as popularly supposed. It rather corrodes the health, well-being and environment of the societies it collides with, while the promised benefits fail to materialise for the great majority of people. This article, one of the first ever critiques of mass tourism, was published in The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 2, February 1974, and republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). See ordering information … Read More
The Post Industrial Age
In the early years of its publication, The Ecologist came with the subtitle "Journal of the Post Industrial Age". Its message—that society needed to begin voluntarily de-industrialising if it was to avoid global catastrophe in the century ahead, a disaster that would mean de-industrialisation by default—with all the suffering that would entail. The seminal Blueprint for Survival published in January 1972 was the manifesto that outlined this vision of a voluntary transition to … Read More
Is science a religion?
Published in The Ecologist Vol. 5 No. 2, February 1975. We live in an Age of Faith, not in God but in Science. If most of us are still capable of facing the mounting problems of the world today with relative. equanimity, this is because we believe that Science will provide us with the means of solving them: half a millennium ago we would have expected God to do so. Scientists are functionally the priests of our industrial society. It is only they who are capable of … Read More
Featured Articles
The Post Industrial Age
In the early years of its publication, The Ecologist came with the subtitle "Journal of the Post Industrial Age". Its message—that society needed to begin voluntarily de-industrialising if it was to avoid global catastrophe in the century ahead, a disaster that would mean de-industrialisation by … [Read More]
Aluna (2012) – the Kogis return
In this new film (due April 2012), Alan Ereira returns to the Kogi of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Columbia, 20 years on from his first visit * which opened the world to this lost pre-Columbian civilisation, and its message that we (“the Younger Brothers”) are set on a course of global … [Read More]
The Crisis of Civilization (2012)
Based on the book A Users Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: and how to save it, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed explains how systemic failings intrinsic to industrial society are converging inexorably towards its collapse before the century's end. Rather than attempting to change the current industrial … [Read More]
Transition
The Crisis of Civilization (2012)
Based on the book A Users Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: and how to save it,
Towards the stable society: strategy for change
Section 2: A Blueprint for Survival. The Blueprint occupied the entire issue of
Epistemology
Living things seek to understand their relationship with their environment
Published as Chapter 16 of The Way: An Ecological Worldview, originally published
Thermodynamics or ecodynamics?
Scientists and philosophers - many of them sympathetic to the ecological movement -
sending...